LIP SERVICE

Ken Lipshez, a member of the CT High School Coaches Hall of Fame, has been covering local sports in central Connecticut since 1992. He is also past president and treasurer of the CT Sports Writers' Alliance, which has staged the prestigious Gold Key Dinner annually since 1939 (see ctsportswriters.org). Ken worked both as an administrator (1981-88) and a beat reporter for Eastern League baseball (1996-2010). Aside from sports, his passions include American history, classic movies (pre-1970), the Grateful Dead and 1960s TV shows, particularly westerns.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

WHATTA DAY !!

What a day in sports!

My dedicated sports-fan wife Lisa and I rushed home from her mom's birthday dinner to catch the tip-off for the Celtics-Heat playoff game. I get to do the channel surfing so I bopped around the Comcast lineup.

Come to find out that Colorado Rockies pitcher Ubaldo Jimenez tossed a no-no against the Atlanta Braves. That makes it a rare day in itself.

In monitoring other games on mlb.com, I noted that the St. Louis Cardinals and New York Mets had quite the string of scoreless innings going. Would you believe 18?

Meanwhile the Celtics, pretty horrible through much of the game, made a nice comeback and were putting a wrap on Game 1 when a melee broke out near the Heat bench. Paul Pierce got dumped and was lying on the floor near the bench when the players started pushing and shoving.

Leave it to Kevin Garnett to say something. He got two technicals and was ejected. Miami has a new life with 4o seconds to go.

While the refs are trying to sort it out, I'm searching the Comcast lineup for the Mets game. It wasn't on SNY. It wasn't on CNX Ch. 9. The Comcast guide didn't help because the game should have been over four hours ago. Where the heck is it? I start going through the channels one by one when I discovered it was the Fox Game of the Week.

The Mets scored in the 19th and the Cards tied it up? No. And former Rock Cats pitcher Kyle Lohse is playing where? Left field? And a position player named Mather is pitching? What's wrong with that picture? Is the great Tony La Russa still managing the Cards or did he get two technicals, too?

The Celts and Heat finally started up and the Celts hang on. Great game for Tony Allen, Tommy points galore.

Back to the Mets. They score in the 20th and after 7 hours of baseball, the Mets win the damned thing.

And through all that. the Red Sox and Tampa are still going because they had to finish up the suspended game from Friday. Cool. More baseball.

And with the Stanley Cup Playoffs going, I'm sure something exciting happened there, but I don't give a hoot about hockey.